Known swinging doors for use in stores, offices and factories have typically included core doors in which a wooden core (plywood, chipboard, or the like) is faced with metal or plastic laminate (for example of FORMICA brand laminate sheet material) sheets. While durable, such doors tend to be relatively heavy, to have a rigid, unyielding surface and may tend to impart an uncomfortable jolt to persons bumping thereinto, to start or stop their swing.
Another known type of swing door utilizes merely a single thickness of sheet metal, such as an aluminum plate. This is considerably thinner than the core-type door above mentioned but may also be relatively heavy, with corresponding inertia problems, if made sturdy enough to resist bending and denting in normal use.
Both known types of doors have been provided with gasketed windows, but the resilient (typically rubber) gasket which holds the window normally extends beyond the adjacent front or rear surface of the door and may thus be cut or knocked out of place by impact with passing persons or things. Further, both of these known types of doors involve difficulties in mounting of door edge gaskets (door edge seals), which may be desired to provide a dust or air seal between paired swinging doors or between a swinging door and its frame, such difficulties being both in gasket installation design and in replacing worn or torn edge gaskets.
Accordingly, the objects of this invention include provision of:
A core door of thermal formed synthetic resin materials, which is relatively lightweight and substantially rigid, which is capable of construction alternately with no window or with a window of a variety of alternate shapes and sizes, wherein the window pane is held in place by a peripheral gasket which is substantially flush with or inboard of the front or rear faces of the door so as to limit any tendency to snag or be damaged by persons or equipment passing through the doorway, in which a peripheral edge gasket is readily and replaceably installed, and in which conventional window panes, window gaskets and mounting hardware and edge seal gaskets are usable.
A door as aforesaid which has front and rear faces substantially free of seams, nuts, screws and the like so as to be free of any tendency to catch on persons or equipment passing through the doorway and so as to be readily cleanable, the material of the front and rear surfaces of the doors being easily maintained clean.
A method for making a door as aforesaid capable of employing a commercially available honeycomb type, synthetic resin core member, in which the front and rear door skins are vacuum formable of conventional synthetic resin materials and in which the assembly of the core and formed skins to produce a finished door is readily carried out with relatively simple tools in a quick and relatively low cost manner.
Further objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons acquainted with apparatus of this general type upon reading the following specification and inspecting the accompanying drawings.
The objects and purposes of the invention are met by providing a door comprises a core comprising a synthetic resin honeycomb core member. Front and rear door skins adhere to and sandwich the core. Spaced opposed peripheral edge flanges of the door skins retain a gasket retainer in a peripheral edge slot in the core. A resilient edge gasket extends from the gasket retainer out between the peripheral edge flanges of the door skins. Windowed and nonwindowed embodiments are contemplated. In a windowed embodiment, at concentric openings in the core and door skins, the door skins are depressed inboard toward each other to form a common peripheral flange for a window mounting gasket. A method of making the door includes molding the skins and core member from synthetic resin material, trimming same to size, slotting the core peripheral edge and inserting the gasket lock member, adhering and pressing the cut skins onto the side-by-side panel and core member forming the core and pressing same together, and installing the window with its gasket (in a windowed embodiment), mounting hardware, and the resilient edge gasket.